Maniacs on Pedestals

by Scott Horton

"[B]y false interpretations, and naked usurpations, the government
has been made in practice a very widely, and almost wholly, different thing
from what the Constitution itself purports to authorize. … But whether
the Constitution really be one thing, or another, this much is certain –
that it has either authorized such a government as we have had, or has been
powerless to prevent it. In either case, it is unfit to exist."
- Lysander Spooner,No Treason(1867)

Ever since the Constitution was ratified,
what is now the national government of the United States has been brutally killing
people. It began with George Washington's invasion
of Pennsylvania to put down the Whiskey Rebellion
in 1794, and has scarcely stopped for a day.

In addition to this handful of official declarations of war, the United States
military has undertaken – ready? – over 240 other violent interventions,
not including the
near-extermination of the American Indian, the
Union's invasion of the Southern Confederacy, the "putting
down" of strikers,
or the Waco massacre.

This list compiled
for the U.S. Navy by the Library of Congress is incomplete, as it ends in 1993,
and Lord
knows the U.S. government has killed a hell of a lot
of people since then.

Now, not all of these wars have been aggressive invasions by America. Obviously,
if not for the U.S.
Army, we'd all be speaking
Japanese right now. And then there was that time when North Korea almost
conquered Washington State…

Truth is, the U.S. government is nothing but a ring of brutal thugs who wrap
themselves in the legitimacy of our traditions as they wage aggressive warfare.

The U.S. military does not protect liberty, and they
sure don't spread it. They are the provocation for our enemies, and their
secret "intelligence" agencies now admit that the resentment caused by their
recent adventure in Iraq has turned that country into a "breeding ground"
for future terrorists.

National
defense is a myth. The purpose of government is the use of violent force
to tax "its" people to pay for their own sons to go far away to kill people
and die for the private interests that
control the state – and make more enemies along the way.

No outside enemy could ever destroy America, short of an all-out nuclear attack.
And why bother with that? Those whom our politicians have made into our enemies
can sit back and watch as we destroy ourselves.